


i love you [insane]

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4955023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shun goes to sleep cold in a house that only artificially welcomes him, and he wakes up colder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i love you [insane]

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Ailee's new song, "Insane," and immediately knew what I had to do.
> 
> Enjoy :)

“Your room,” Reiji says curtly. “You can stay here while we’re holding the tournament.”

Shun nods, eyes not meeting his (because every time he does, he feels like Reiji’s the enemy, that he shouldn’t be here, as if he’s being tricked). “Thanks,” he growls, because once upon a time, in a time of peace and smiles, he was a polite kid.

The room is lavish, too extravagant for what’s supposed to be a guest room, but Shun supposes it’s usually not inhabited by street-rats or refugees considering the company he’s reluctantly keeping. He steps in, closes the door, and is satisfied to find a lock on it that he turns to keep Reiji from following him in. The click echoes through the room, and for the first time in a week Shun is alone.

“You’d like it here,” he says to no one, because Yuuto isn’t around, hasn’t been around, wasn’t there for their last rendezvous even though Shun had waited long into the night just in case.

_Where are you?_

(He refuses to acknowledge the usual, the answer they always dealt with back in Heartland when comrades went missing.)

He throws his pack onto the bed and it bounces. Yeah, Yuuto and Ruri would like it here.

(Reiji would not like having them here, especially if they ever discovered the staircase railing in the back.)

A buzz sounds through the room and Shun jumps.

“ _Making yourself at home?_ ”

“Go away.”

“ _Let me know if you need anything. Breakfast is at ten._ ”

Shun scowls at the intercom. Breakfast is whenever the hell he wants to have it, if his tour of the place was anything to go by. The ladies in the kitchen kept shoving bread rolls into his pockets, going on about how skinny he was and poking his ribs. They were, if possible, more hospitable than Himika, though Shun thinks it’s probably because their first meeting involved his trenchcoat and boots being caked in mud.

And what kind of house has intercoms anyway?

(One that probably has security cameras too. Shun makes a mental note to scope it out later.)

But now… Shun stares at the bed, where at least twenty pillows take up most of the space and wonders which one he’s supposed to put his head on.

_Rich people…_

He shoves off most of the pillows, decorative, beaded, or ruffled, and picks the comfiest one before unzipping his boots and discarding his jacket. Reiji had said something about maids filling the drawers with pajamas and toiletries for him, but he didn’t want to wake up smelling like Reiji in the morning, wearing his pajamas that probably had some tacky family crest embroidered on all of them.

(He checked. They did. Good call.)

~

He wakes up in the morning, the intercom buzzing incessantly at him like Reiji was a kid who liked pressing the doorbell a billion times.

“Shut up…” Shun grumbles, muffled by pillows, the last wisps of a dream fading from his memory.

He vaguely remembers something, tries to grasp it before it goes for good, but then Reiji’s somehow unlocked the door, leaning against the frame and twirling a key on his finger.

“Master key,” he says simply when Shun pins him with a glare. “Breakfast is soon.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t act like a child.”

He leaves and Shun breathes, and something doesn’t feel right (but it’s probably because this is the comfiest bed he’s had the fortune of sleeping in since… well.

He doesn’t want to think about that.

Half an hour later, a maid comes into his room and drags him out of bed, muttering things about how he has no fat on him and needs to eat properly. He succumbs when she shoves a freshly baked chocolate chip muffin from the table in his face.

~

Maybe it’s the bed, the comfort of being in a home even if it’s as unwelcoming as a charred building full of asbestos, but he sleeps the best here, in Akaba Reiji’s guest room, where there are too many decorative pillows on the bed that he throws to the floor only to see them immaculately in place when he comes back.

He has dreams that don’t involve fire or crumbling buildings, where he’s not rattled by screams and booms in the distance, when Ruri exists and Yuuto is still by his side.

( _I love you._ )

~

He wishes he could control his dreams, make them last longer into the day, skip breakfast (but Reiji’s schedule is too strict, and his maids are insistent that they fatten his skinny bones up before he leaves them for good).

Instead, he watches every night as Yuuto walks into his dreams, like he’s still around, he’s not MIA, and everything is alright because it’s just another day at Heartland Middle School. He dreams of the way Yuuto used to bite his lip trying to work through his homework questions, or scrunched up his nose when Ruri’s perfume was too strong but he didn’t want to say so.

Shun picks at his breakfast, an assortment of freshly baked, too-sweet carbs that the maids are convinced will help bulk him up. Reiji eats with precision, cutting everything into small pieces, and Shun scoffs because Reiji is weird and needs to be scoffed at.

(He gets way too much praise for literally doing nothing so.)

“Can I take a few more of those?” Shun asks the maid who’s been attending to him.

“Of course!” she says, and she exchanges what’s probably expressions of victory with a couple of the other maids milling about with platters in their hands.

He’ll pass them on to Yuuto when he finally makes contact again.

(He’s still out there in Maiami. It’s a big city, with bright streets and dark alleys, but he’s somewhere. No one just disappears. Not in a city where their enemy turned out to be an ally, no matter how much of a dick he is.)

“You want me to keep pouring money into your search?” Reiji asks, as if talking about the weather and not Shun’s best friend.

“Yes,” Shun responds immediately through a mouthful of omelette.

“You’ll owe me.”

He swallows. “I don’t care. You’re the one with the creeper cams in every corner of the city.”

Reiji diplomatically chooses not to respond. Good. Shun has more knowledge about Yuuto’s childish lookalike than he wants because of those cameras, there’s no way it’s impossible to run a facial recognition search.

(Akaba Reiji is just a stingy asshole.)

~

The docks were empty again, as were the other rendezvous points, and Shun shoves off all the decorative pillows from his bed again, seething because his search has turned up with absolutely nothing. He wonders if Reiji’s even trying.

Shun’s on the verge of praying to gods he’s stopped believing in just to catch a glimpse of Yuuto on the streets again.

~

_I’m not avoiding you, Shun._

~

The intercom buzzes, and the afterimage of Yuuto, face lit up by the campfire they’d made back in Heartland City, heating up cans of beans they’d pillaged from a broken-down, abandoned, third-rate grocery store as they told embarrassing middle school stories, stubbornly stuck in his mind as Reiji’s voice punches through.

“Go away,” Shun grumbles.

“Get up,” Reiji says, and he’s opened the door, maid at his side ready to drag him out kicking and screaming if she has to just to feed him if her rolled up sleeves say anything about it.

He still doesn’t know why Reiji insists on having breakfast in the dining room, a huge glittering crystal chandelier overhead as they drink orange juice from wine glasses because rich people don’t own regular glasses, apparently.

“Any luck yesterday?”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

“I suppose it’s irrational to play with luck when lives are in the equation.”

“Fuck you.”

~

The streets of Maiami city are bright and friendly, lined with colourful shops and smiling residents, and it’s almost like what Heartland used to be, once upon a time.

Shun shouldn’t have come out, not when the sun is out and he so easily gets lost in the crowds of people in the parks and malls. The city centre is so packed that Shun figures there must be an event going on. Something Reiji never alerted him to (or maybe he did and Shun refused to listen).

A tournament is in session, Shun finds out from the chatter around him. For kids, and someone (Akaba Reiji, probably) donated an Action Field generator for the occasion.

It’s a shot in the dark, but he keeps his eyes peeled under his sunglasses for any sign of Yuuto, whether the swish of a cape, tattered ends trailing on the ground because he never grew into the clothes they’d stolen from charity bins, or the sharp, dyed spikes of his hair that always somehow glinted in the sunlight.

Hours pass by, hours he could’ve spent rechecking all of their meetup spots, or sitting in the abandoned warehouse that Yuuto had made his temporary home when they’d first arrived (even though he cleared out his stuff weeks ago, when the police got calls about suspicious activity and had a section of warehouses blocked off and canvassed).

“I hope we didn’t miss Ayu’s duel!”

Shun looks up, voice too hauntingly familiar even though he knows better than to think it belongs to Ruri. He spots her in the crowd, the lookalike Yuuto had been with last time Shun saw him. Was it… Yu…

“I think we’re just in time,” the boy next to her chirps, elbowing her in the side. “Told you we wouldn’t be late!”

“I’d rather be early,” Yuzu (that’s her name, Shun remembers) complains, and Shun wonders how he can hear them so clearly, like beacons of sound.

“Ayu’s good, she can handle a turn or two without a cheer squad!”

Carefree and stupid. Nothing like Yuuto. Shun scowls under his scarf and sunglasses before turning on his heel and walking away.

He wouldn’t be here anyway.

~

It’s when he’s curled up in the Akaba household’s guestroom, under the thick quilt and surrounded by even more pillows than he swears there was this morning, that a maid knocks on his door.

“Kurosaki?”

Reluctantly, he leaves the cocoon he’s wrapped himself in and answers. “Hi.”

“Here’s some food for you! You missed dinner today, so we kept a plate warm for you.” She hands him a covered silver platter. “Watch your fingers, it’s still quite hot!”

“Thank you,” he says as he adjusts it in his hands.

“Have a good night!”

“You… too?”

She shuts the door and he decides dinner in bed sounds good (too bad breakfast in bed is something the Akaba’s don’t believe in).

~

Shun’s at his locker, middle school hallways running on forever in the dreamscape, but he can point out the library a block of lockers away, where Ruri’s busy serving detention and putting all the returns away.

He remembers this. It was the day she got caught using her D-Gazer to text in class. It was brand new, the latest model that she’d been saving up her allowance for, and she’d just gotten it the night before, unravelled the package and hooked it around her ear to see the world in binary.

There’s a tug at his shirt as he searches through his locker for who knows what, and the feeling is all too familiar.

“Hey, Shun.”

“Hey.”

Yuuto’s as skinny and short as Shun’s always known him to be, his seventh grade growth spurt barely giving him an inch.

“You waiting up for Ruri?”

“I guess so.”

A smile spreads over his lips. “While we wait, I wanna show you something.”

The dreamscape shifts, but before it can settle, a buzz sounds so loud, so irritating, and Shun throws the nearest pillow at the intercom.

“Fuck _off._ ”

 


End file.
